Social

In a change from the ‘barefoot bowls’ we’ve enjoyed for the last couple of years, Social Secretary Donna Campbell booked our club’s annual Christmas function at Capital Brewing, Fyshwick.

This place has it all – it’s a shed located around the corner from the sewerage farm, with burgers and beer. What more do you need?

Seriously – a good choice Donna! Thirty plus Vikings and friends/family of Vikings had a great night.

In addition to presentations of the formal perpetual club awards listed below, a number of, ahhh, ‘novelty’ awards were also dished out to some unsuspecting recipients. To save some embarrassment, no names listed for those ones, so you’ll need to ask!!

The 2017 NSW State SC Championships were held at the AIS pool in Canberra on 14/15 October.

It is always such a treat when a major swim meet is in our town and we are able to sleep in your own beds. It must give us an advantage because all that was seen on pool deck during the two day swim competition were happy smiling Vikings. This was also projected into the pool with all Vikings being pleased with their swims.

A swag of medals were collected and multiple personal best times.

22 Vikings entered the championships and with Blacktown having 24 swimmers it was always going to be a close battle for the overall point score trophy and relay trophy. 32 clubs made the trip to the AIS and Blacktown were victors in the overall point score by the smallest of margins – 1284 points to our Vikings points of 1064.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who spent some of their time timekeeping.. which is a great way to meet swimmers from other clubs and get a birds eye view of some good swimming techniques. Thank you to Christine Leary, Denise Druitt and Pete Sharman for committing to the club and volunteering their time to “man” the medal table over the weekend.

Special thanks to Anne Smyth for her time at the medal table as she was unable to compete in her individual events due to injury, but still managing to swim four relay legs for us!

There were so many highlights in the pool … but the most exciting had to be the relays.

We had six relay teams winning gold! Congratulations to everyone for making the relays so successful, such awesome team spirit, and to Caroline Makin for organising such fantastic teams ensuring the Vikings where a force to be reckoned with!

It was great to watch Annette Britten and Leisa Cass swimming so well with both returning from shoulder injuries. Watch Annette do Backstroke and learn how to execute perfect shoulder rotation!

Paul Quinn and Richard Phillips are both gaining fitness and swam fantastic 200m Freestyles, both winning gold. Donna Campbell and Kylie Lane continue to gain fitness and more personal best times – showing in particular in the 100m and 200m Individual Medley events.

It was sensational to have Atsuko McGowan back competing with us again – her awesome determination shone through in the extremely close finish in the Womens 160+ Freestyle Relay, clinching us the gold by a few tenths of seconds ahead of Blacktown in the next lane – what an exciting race to be involved in and watch!

Many thanks go to Ann Reid for representing Tuggeranong as a meet official in her role as inspector of turns between her individual races, with a nice 200m Butterfly in that tough event at the end of the meet.

Cecelia Kaye, Brenda Day, Tom Boyce and Andreas Falkenau all had solid swims adding valuable points for the Vikings and David Bale was stoked with his personal best times in the 100m Individual Medley and in the last event of the day, the 200m Butterfly.

Well done to Kristen Leydon who was over the moon when at the end of the meet she realised she had earned herself a couple of medals in her pet events the 100m Individual Medley and 50m Freestyle. Caroline Makin was also over the moon when she saw she had swum a personal best time in her pet event the 100m Freestyle and repeated that in the 100m Backstroke.

Katrina Burgess commented that she has “enjoyed watching Helen Morris swimming over the weekend as she amazes us with her consistent improvement every time she dives into the pool – her hard work at training and endurance sessions is obviously paying off for her”.

Congratulations to those swimmers who finished as Age Group Champions: Nick Grinter, Kylie Lane, Katrina Burgess and Pam Munday.

Thank you to everyone for such a successful weekend. We may not have come away with any trophies but we were definitely winners as we executed the masters swimming motto “Fun, Friendship, Fitness” with a 100% success rate.

The Tuggeranong Challenge 2017 – The Richard Flockart Edition took place at Lakeside Leisure Centre on Saturday, 16 September 2017.

This special edition of our regular Challenge meet included a 25m Butterfly event “THE FLOCKART FLYER” took place at the start of the meet and was swum in memory of Richard Flockart.

Richard passed away on 20 December 2016 from complications arising from his treatment from myelofibrosis. Richard’s death was totally unexpected. Although myelofibrosis is a serious condition, Richard’s medical reports had been positive. We had expected Richard to complete his treatment in Melbourne and to return to swimming in Canberra in early 2017.

Richard had been a club member for many years and was an active competitor, his favourite and best stroke being Butterfly. Richard competed with both with us at Tuggeranong and his first club the Powerpoints. During the initial years of his illness Richard continued to train with us, during most of 2016 Richard did not have the physical stamina to train, however he did manage to keep fit and he continued with his study of German. He was one of a kind and always made us smile!

We saw 90% of the swimmers entered in the meet taking part in The Flockart Flyer. We asked swimmers to wear something purple or pink in honour of Richard and his love of those colours!

There was a mystery prize for the swimmer who finished closest to their nominated entry time in the 25m Butterfly event “THE FLOCKART FLYER” … and the winner was Caz Makin from Vikings … who won this fabulous “Fly King” swim cap in memory of Richard whilst wearing a purple suit and pink cap and goggles!

Next up we moved onto The “Challenge” which consists of swimming a 50m, 100m and 200m Event, each in a different stroke.

To ascertain the winner we aggregate the absolute difference between actual and nominated time for each of the three events. For example: if you swim 2 seconds faster in event 1, 3 seconds slower in event 2 and 0.5 of a second faster in event 4, your total difference over the 3 events is 5.5 seconds. The trophy will be presented to the swimmer with the smallest total difference. The fastest swimmer will not necessarily be the winner.

The winner of the 50m challenge event was Anne Smyth who swam Freestyle hitting her entry time exactly whilst Katrina Burgess won the 100m challenge event swimming Backstroke also hitting her entry time exactly – both ladies to the .00 difference on the nose! Donna Campbell was the closest to nominated time in the 200m challenge event swimming Breastroke within 0.02 of her entry time …

The Overall Challenge winner was Nick Grinter showing consistent swimming across the 3 events with a total time difference on entry times of 1.28 seconds. Katrina Burgess place 2nd overall with a time difference of 3.36 seconds and Caz Makin 3rd overall with a 3.39 second time difference.

The Tuggeranong Challenge meet also includes with an exciting finale to the day – the Champagne Shoot Out Relay. The 6 teams closest to their nominated entry time in the 4x50m Freestyle Relay go through to the Champagne Shoot Out Relay which is a handicapped event, with the winning team being the first to touch the wall!

This year we saw of mixture of Womens, Mens and Mixed teams in the finale from Tuggeranong Vikings, Molonglo Water Dragons, Campbelltown and Ginninderra. The Vikings Women’s Team of Atsuko McGowan, Kylie Lane, Suzie Gunning and Katrina Burgess held on to clinch victory finishing less than a second ahead of the Vikings Mens “youngster” team in 2nd place.

A big thank you goes out to everyone that offered their support on the day and those that helped make this excellent event possible:

Annette Britten – as Meet Director for processing all entries in the Meet Manager system and running such a successful event on the day.

Caz Makin for once again organising the flyer and program for the event and sorting out our Vikings relay teams, especially as she had been enjoying a holiday overseas and only returned home the week before the Challenge!

Our visiting officials: Jodie Burke, Paul Bailey, Audrey Stutsel, Owen Sinden, Greg Lewin and Victor Libdy (who stepped in to give us a hand with starting – thanks Victor!). Your ongoing support is very much appreciated and without you we would not be able to run this fun event.

Our club officials: Anne Smyth, Greg Gourley and Gary Stutsel for stepping in and lending a hand again and again.

Greg Gourley for ensuring we had all our electrical goods charged, at the pool and ready for the day!

Our recording team of Scott Makin and Jane Lindsay – A super job given that we were running 3 programs to obtain all the final results for the day.

Rachel Morris – our runner for the day who did a fantastic job.

Anne Smyth for organising all the prizes for the day and organising the set up and pack up crews.

Donna Campbell for organising the catering, raffle prizes and selling tickets on the day and for organising the dinner afterwards. Officials were impressed by the spread of food supplied from the Café at the pool and the raffle was great with about 15 prizes in total up for grabs.

Our volunteers who turned up to help with time keeping for the afternoon even though they were not swimming.

Our volunteers who turned up to help set up for the event and pack away after the event. As they say “many hands make light work”!

Those that provided home baked goodies and nibbles for the tea and coffee table.

We are sure that all competitors had a fabulous afternoon of swimming and enjoyed the fun and friendship of the day in the true spirit of the Masters Swimming Australia motto.

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About Masters Swimming …

Masters Swimming is an Australia wide, nonprofit organisation for adult swimmers, with the aim to promote swimming and fitness for those 18 years and above, regardless of ability. Masters Swimming Australia is affiliated with Masters Swimming International.
Tuggeranong Masters Swimming ACT has structured a program of training sessions and schedules to assist you in improving your personal swimming ability and physical fitness.
Tuggeranong is located in South Canberra, Australia.